Concerning the Comments of Talk Show Host Don Imus -- A Statement by Dr. Alveda King

Priests for Life

4/16/2007

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Jerry Horn

Atlanta, GA – The racist slurs hurled by radio host Don Imus are reprehensible and certainly warrant the outrage that has followed. The fact that certain black men use similar or identical words when talking about black women is not a defense for Mr. Imus’s epithets, only further evidence of the debasing of American culture.

The Imus scandal highlights a deeper and broader problem in our country, the disrespect we have for each other. The murders of my father, the Rev. A.D. King, and my uncle, Dr. Martin Luther King, were born of this disrespect. So were the deaths of 48 million babies by abortion. When we regard certain people as lesser than ourselves, the value of life is cheapened.

To me, it’s as offensive to call an unborn baby a “blob of tissue” as it is to call a black woman a “ho.” The disrespect to humanity is the same. My outrage is the same.

Yes, Don Imus’s apologies are necessary. But I demand the same from every public figure who has ever said that babies in the womb are not persons.

Priests for Life is the nation's largest Catholic pro-life organization dedicated to ending abortion and euthanasia. For more information, visit www.priestsforlife.org.